MSI X299 Xpower Gaming AC - Thoughts?

I see a lot of talk on this forum of people waiting with bated breath for the Asus Apex and Asus Extreme X299 boards. I am looking at purchasing a high end X299 board along with an i9-7900X. I've looked at these Asus boards (anticipatory reviews?) as well as the MSI Xpower. My question is, why is everyone talking about the Asus board that doesn't exist and yet not a single thread on the MSI board that is available today? Is the MSI board a potato? Is there a reason I shouldn't be looking at this board as a potential candidate for my next build?

Even tried getting it added to PCPartPicker, I'm assuming the staff have been swamped with additions though because it seems to be taking quite some time.

I ended up buying the board, waiting on my 7900x to come back from Silicon Lottery and some watercooling supplies to arrive before putting my build together. Probably sometime next week, I can definitely update you on it once it's running.

My feedback:
-10 SATA Ports - Now I know some people don't need that many but I personally find it necessary, especially with my current storage needs

-I'm only using one NVMe drive (Samsung 960 Evo 1TB) and I had to make sure to place it in the very top M.2 Shield Frozr slot otherwise you end up disabling Sata ports, depending on your SATA needs this could be an issue running more than 1 M.2 device. I originally had my M.2 in the middle slot and didn't realize that was happening until I poked around in the motherboard manuel and realized this was happening

-Overclocking controls in the original bios felt a bit sluggish, scrolling or moving through the options produced this short delay which seemed really odd. Something I have not experienced before so I don't know if it's common. I have since updated to the latest version (7A91v12) which has fixed all sluggish behavior and the board explorer function does not lock up the bios and force me to restart my system as it had done a couple times that I tried it out. The latest version now does provide the option to set AVX AND AVX512 offsets, prior to that I was only able to set AVX offset. I can attach a CSV log file of a 30min HWinfo log file with prime95 running if you care to take a look at that with GenericLogViewer or something.

-Originally, I had a NH-D15 installed and it blocked the top PCIE 3.0 x16 slot so I had to move my graphics card to the third slot to run in x16 mode. I’ve since installed my custom water cooling loop and do not have that issue anymore.

I haven’t moved my graphics card back until my Step up GTX 1080 Ti comes in, when that does, I will monitor my M.2 temperatures but I don’t anticipate it will cause any problems having the card over the M.2 but I will keep an eye on it.

-I was initially nervous about RAM compatibility, however the XMP button in the BIOS performed flawlessly, so my RAM is running at 3600MHz with 16-16-16-36

I have zero complaints about this motherboard, it checks off all my boxes and I still have room to grow slightly, fan headers all over the place and I haven’t decided on where to place my thermal sensor just yet, if you have a recommendation I’m certainly open to suggestions.

If you’re curious about anything else or want me to run some additional tests I’ll see what I can do to make it happen.

No worries. I appreciate you taking the time at all. I've gone ahead and purchased the board already though and I do have a couple of questions. Are you having any problems with RAM being reported correctly in UEFI/BIOS? When I first went into the UEFI the RAM amount was detected properly just at the wrong speed. As soon as I enabled XMP the speed was correct and each module was detected correctly but the total RAM was inccorect even though it is still showing up properly in CPU Z. I also ran Memtest86 and everything passed without any issues.

Current DRAM Freq. 2133 -- Current DRAM Size 65536

Current DRAM Freq. 3200 -- Current DRAM Size 49152

But CPU Z shows all is well?

Also, MysticLight does absolutely nothing for the LEDs on the motherboard. The only thing I have got that program to do is turn them off and on. I can't change the color or the animations of the LEDs. Have you had any issues?

I have not had any problems with RAM being reported correctly in UEFI/BIOS

Yeah the only thing I can make MysticLight do is turn the LED's on/off as well. Do you have the G. Skill RGB program installed as well?

I have Trident Z RGB RAM, and I knew going into this build that MysticLight and my G.Skill's RGB program have had issues working together when both are installed. I've kept MysticLIght off myself and just enjoyed playing with RGB RAM effects. I have not tried uninstalling Trident Z RGB program and using only MysticLIght to see if that allows MysticLight to work properly. Maybe a future update to the program might fix the problem.

Yeah the only thing I can make MysticLight do is turn the LED's on/off as well. Do you have the G. Skill RGB program installed as well?

I have the non-RGB version of the Trident Z. Mystic Light still does nothing so I doubt G. Skill's program is the issue. I did notice that this version was just released Friday, tried to find an older version to try and had no success finding one. I guess we just wait for an update?

Quote:

I have not had any problems with RAM being reported correctly in UEFI/BIOS.

I ran MemTest again and noticed that it only tested 48GB when on XMP. Ran again at stock speeds and all 64GB was tested successfully. So I decided to test each DIMM one at a time. All were able to run fine at 3200 without an issue individually. But that was only one slot on the MB. So I started adding them one at a time and got some very weird results.

It doesn't matter which DIMM is in which slot, the result is always the same. All of the DIMM's worked when tested individually and I couldn't nail down a single slot that had an issue. I have no idea what is going on here.

I ran MemTest again and noticed that it only tested 48GB when on XMP. Ran again at stock speeds and all 64GB was tested successfully. So I decided to test each DIMM one at a time. All were able to run fine at 3200 without an issue individually. But that was only one slot on the MB. So I started adding them one at a time and got some very weird results.

It doesn't matter which DIMM is in which slot, the result is always the same. All of the DIMM's worked when tested individually and I couldn't nail down a single slot that had an issue. I have no idea what is going on here.

I'm at a loss for why this is occuring, maybe someone with more knowledge than I might be able to chime in and help you out perhaps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RebelHell

I see a new Mystic Light version was released on the 5th. Seems to have fixed the issues for me. Might want to give it another shot.

Installed the newest version and everything is working now, color change and animation effects are in full swing.

I'm at a loss for why this is occuring, maybe someone with more knowledge than I might be able to chime in and help you out perhaps.

I've spoken with MSI and G. Skill, still didn't learn much. The solution at this point is to RMA the RAM, if that doesn't work I should RMA the motherboard, if that isn't it then the CPU has issues. Very helpful information indeed.

Quote:

Installed the newest version and everything is working now, color change and animation effects are in full swing.

Glad to hear it. I've got mine swirling and flashing away. Not sure how I'll use it in the completed build though. But it is purty.

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